Steve Moxon, Deepcar near Sheffield, UK. stevemoxon3(at)talktalk.net
MYTHOLOGY ESSAYS
[All accessible from the buttons of their individual titles above (or subsumed under one of them in a tree)]
The analyses here of mythology — study of origins and what they really are about — are unconnected with the science review work, but this is another window on what makes people and society tick. There is analysis of the hegemonic mythology of today (‘identity politics’ and ‘political correctness’), an outline of the ideological complete misrepresentation of all aspects of the female franchise –women, the vote and the suffragettes; investigations of the two seminal ancient mythologies in Britain — Robin Hood and King Arthur — and the uncovering of the basis oif what at one tome was England’s most famous dragon legend (the Dragon of Wantley) as a quite different early-modern pastiche to the one supposed, and underpinned by unexpected ancient and medieval roots. Work is progressing on the mystery that is St George, and the curiosity that is the Snake Pass / Doctor’s Gate route in of the Peak District. The common thread to all but the non-contemporary mythology is (Scottish) Gaelic etymology, and backing this up are the Gaelic studies: research into place-names, vestiges of ancient festivals, and vernacular speech, all in the South Pennines.
* The Origin of Identity Politics & ‘Political Correctness’: Not consideration for minorities but hatred for the masses; specifically ‘the workers’ — Tracing how and why it arose and developed reveals the greatest political fraud in history. https://stevemoxon.co.uk/identity-politics-and-political-correctness-origin-pc-hatred-the-workers/
‘Identity politics’ (sometimes dubbed ‘political correctness’) is the result of a political-Left major backlash against the mass of ordinary people (in Europe and ‘the West’), beginning in the 1920s/30s, in the wake of the persistent failure of Marxist theory to be realised in European ‘revolution’ or any real change through democracy. In shifting the blame away from Marxist theory and the gullibility of those adhering to it, and on to those the theory prescribed and predicted would have been the beneficiaries, if only they had responded accordingly (‘the workers’); then the cognitive-dissonance within the political-left mindset caused by this crisis to an extent could be salved.
The intellectual rationalisation of this was first by invoking Freud’s discredited notion of ‘repression’ to attempt to explain a supposed impact on ‘the workers’ of ‘capitalism’ acting within the context of the family. With most workers being male, and the principal ‘agents of social change’ in a ‘revolution’ being envisaged as likewise, then the theoreticians had in mind the male as ‘head’ of the family. It was a simple extension in political-Left imagination for ‘the worker’ to change from being the putative conduit of the impact of ‘capitalism’ to its embodiment, leaving women to become the replacement supposed ‘oppressed’ and ‘disadvantaged’. This implausible and unfalsifiable non-scientific nonsense mainly festered within academia until the co-option after 1968 by the political-Left of the seeming revolutionary US ‘civil rights’ movement. This added to the ‘new oppressed’ the category ‘non-white’, which like that of women could be envisaged as an inversion of a retrospective stereotype of ‘the worker’. In the wake of the similarly seeming revolutionary Stonewall riots of 1969, the ‘gay rights’ lobby was also co-opted to further add to the abstract demonised aspects of ‘the worker’, now retrospectively stereotyped as male plus ‘white’ plus heterosexual.
The strands of the ‘new oppressed’ combined in a new (neo-Marxist) conceptualisation to account for these political shifts after the fact, and came to be termed ‘identity politics’ (or more pejoratively but accurately, ‘cultural Marxism’, and latterly dubbed ‘modernising’ [sic] in political parties). The deemed ‘groups’ replacing ‘the workers’ – subsequently expanded to embrace the disabled, the elderly, trans-sexuals and the obese – are abstractions rather than groups per se, and in any case far too heterogeneous to be in reality ‘oppressed’ or ‘disadvantaged’; providing a window on the sophistry and origin of this politics as other than it purports.
The pretence to egalitarianism is perfect cover for what ‘identity politics’ actually is: the very perennial and ubiquitous elitist-separatism the political-Left ethos attacks and denies; rendered a quasi-religion, being an ideology in the wake of the Christian notion of ‘the promised land’ in the utopia/dystopia of equality-of-outcome. This represents a continuation of the process of a shift in religiosity from envisaging a ‘god’ as being in man’s image, through the humanist deification of mankind, to worship of a supposed dynamic of teleological social change (originally understood in Marxism as a form of explicit cognition known as ‘the dialectic’). ‘Identity politics’, in being both not what it pretends to be and now so widespread and entrenched across the whole and every facet of the establishment in Anglophone nations and ‘the West’ generally, can properly be regarded as the greatest political fraud in history.
* All we’re told about Women Getting the Vote and the Role of the Suffragettes is False [The text here (modified to be standalone) was first published as a chapter from the book, The Woman Racket, Imprint Academic 2008] https://stevemoxon.co.uk/all-were-told-about-women-getting-the-vote-and-the-role-of-the-suffragettes-is-false/
What passes for social history regarding the vote is almost complete misrepresentation of the reality of what was or wasn’t fair to women vis-a-vis men. As regards having any say on decisions of interest to one sex or the other, it was not women but men who had been sold well short, because it was not voting at the national but at the local level that addressed women’s concerns. Whereas only a minority of men even at the start of 1918 could vote in parliamentary elections, women had always had the vote at parish level on exactly the same basis as men, and continued to do so.
* The Origin of Robin Hood Mythology: The Etymology of the ‘Robin Hood’ Name https://stevemoxon.co.uk/robin_hood_name_origin_myth_etymology/
The first-ever etymological investigation into the origin of Robin Hood mythology — RH obviously not being a real personage. The conclusion is that it is clearly ancient and not medieval: ‘Celtic’; specifically (Scottish) Gaelic rodaidh, diminutive of ruadhrí, ‘red king’ (the mythic figure who sacrifices himself because his regal blood is required to be shed on to the land to ensure its fertility); this meaning and etymology entwined with that denoting the deity to whom the sacrifice is made: rìbhinn (rìgh-beann), ‘king-wife’, meaning ‘maiden-queen’ — the Celtic deity Bríd (Bríg, Brighid). This was later qualified by hood from Welsh hud, ‘magic’, ‘fairy’, in the sense of ‘devil’, referring to ‘the old religion’.
* Unmasking King Arthur: Etymology reveals the basis of Arthurian legend https://stevemoxon.co.uk/king-arthur-name-origin-etymology-myth-arthurian/
Following the etymological investigation into the Robin Hood name, the same approach to tackle the riddle of the origin of Arthurian legend reveals likewise no historical personage and effectively the same meaning of ‘serpent’, in the same language (Gaelic), (n)athair; and which surely again alludes to the pan-‘Celtic’ deity Bridhe.
* St George Deciphered https://stevemoxon.co.uk/st-george-deciphered/
Just as is the case with Robin (Hood) and (King) Arthur, the name itself of (St) George turns out to be the key to the origin of what yet agin is a mythological and not an historical figure. The assumed Greek mundane etymology is mistaken, instead appearing to be two closely related (almost antonymic) Gaelic words: giorghal, ‘brave, fearless, strong’, and giorac, ‘cause of fear, dread, panic’, which respectively would be apposite re a soldier and his ‘monster’ adversary. Giorghal also has the meaning ‘feat of arms’, which would indicate the conflict and that it is an important test. With the deep etymology also Gaelic, the mythology is apparently a re-import of what was already in Britain in pre-Christian guise. Once again — as with Robin Hood and King Arthur — it’s regeneration lore: the usurping of the ‘old king’ by the ‘new king’, in a sympathetic magic ritual of spilling the blood of the earthly manifestation of the deity on to the land to make it fertile.
* The Dragon of Wantley: The Mystery of the Famous English Legend Now Solved https://stevemoxon.co.uk/dragon-of-wantley-reappraisal-legend-myth/
This overturns the longstanding theory of the origin of what was England’s most famous dragon legend. The early-modern ballad was not to do with the Wortley Lords but the Counter-Reformation, involving a law suit initiated and conducted solely by George More of Sheffield against George Talbot, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury. Furthermore, there are localised ancient mythological roots in ‘Celtic’ serpent and, it seems, ‘water-monster’ place-namings, with a medieval ‘dragon v knight’ overlay through the local presence of the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem.
* Gaelic Vestiges in England https://stevemoxon.co.uk/gaelic-vestiges-in-england/ This is the parent of a tree:
* Etymology to Reveal the Basis of Mythologies of Britain is Prompted by the Surprising Predominance of (Scottish) Gaelic Place-Name Derivation Across the ‘Dark Peak’, as Illustrated Here by Sheffield Core-Central Street Names https://stevemoxon.co.uk/dark-peak-place-names-are-gaelic/ * Etymology to Reveal the Basis of Mythologies of Britain is Prompted by the Surprising Predominance of (Scottish) Gaelic Place-Name Derivation Across the ‘Dark Peak’, as Illustrated Here by Stocksbridge area Place Names https://stevemoxon.co.uk/dark-peak-gaelic-place-naming-2-stocksbridge-area/ * Gaelic Festival Vestiges in England: Whit, Galas, Feasts, Wakes, Kakin and Dannikins in the South Pennines https://stevemoxon.co.uk/gaelic-festival-vestiges/ * Gaelic in Vernacular English: The Gaelic Basis of Dark Peak (More Widely South Pennine) Vernacular Speech https://stevemoxon.co.uk/gaelic-in-vernacular-english/ * Extreme Vulgar Words are All Gaelic (words that are used in swearing, abuse or for rudeness effect that are charged through being, or supposedly being sexual — all are Gaelic in etymology) https://stevemoxon.co.uk/extreme-vulgar-words-are-all-gaelic/
Several pages are studies in the wake of the findings of Gaelic etymology of the names of key British mythological figures: research into place-names, vestiges of ancient festivals, and vernacular speech, all in the South Pennines. All reveal a Gaelic basis, reinforcing the findings re Robin Hood and Arthurian mythologies. Most of these have been published in shorter form in Stirrings magazine over the past few years: the account of Sheffield core-central street names, all of which are (Scottish) Gaelic in origin (the autumn 2016 edition); also the investigation of vernacular speech, and the articles on Cakin Night and Dannikins.