By Michael Spires
3/19/2019

There was once a people, a people in possession of learned and scientific mind. They turned from the ways of those who came before, and instead of worshipping the gods and goddesses, they worshipped a philosophy. They worshipped Progress.

This philosophy, this Cult of Progress served the people well. New innovations came along which made life better for the people. The steam engine, electricity, advancements in science and medicines.

The people flourished.

With the people doing so well under the ever-present Progress, sub-cults began to form, taking the ideas of Progress to different areas of existence.

The Cult of the Red People, and the Cult of the Blue People built institutions unto their own specific vision of Progress, and the people worshipped at both their temples.

A sickness began to spread among the people, however. For Progress was a cult of the profane, even in all its wonders that it did for the people, it lacked foundation in the sacred. Soul scars began to develop in the people, they were cut off from the Sacred. That which keeps a people healthy and whole.

The profane Cult of Progress even began to infect their lives and leisure. Measuring percentage of Progress in games and family activity and more and more aspects of their daily lives. All was measured. The Cult of Progress demanded it.

And the people continued to sicken. Rape. Murder. Mass shootings. All manner of atrocities against their fellows.

The Cult of the Red People, and The Cult of the Blue People accused each other of angering Progress and put the blame of this great sickness on each other. All the while failing to understand that neither side was nourishing the soul of the people. Simply corrupting it, for the Cult of Progress, at its root, was still profane.

As the sickness spread, the people turned to one of the Pinnacles of Progress…the World Web, an ingenious creation which connected households across the globe. They abandoned the sacred groves and temples of old and there they prayed to Progress. Wrote great litanies for their cult. They proselytized. They accused. They begged Progress to save them.

Yet still the people sickened.

And so here we remain. A people weakening and growing sickly, waging holy wars about profane philosophies that cannot heal us. Waging crusades to seize control of the Myth.

The Myth of Progress that is killing us.

Okay, so now the plain talk footnote….

Man needs Myth like he needs air.

It provides us with identity and purpose. Sacred myth connects us with the sacred and lets us participate in that great cosmic upkeep. Whether it be the sacred dances of the Native Americans or the Sacrifice of the gift cycle of the IE peoples.

Our increasingly secular and scientific world has built up myths around profane institutions though. And while they work for a while, they do not let the people experience that cosmic renewal as a society.

And the soul sickness of prolonged profane myth shows. Increasing depression, anxiety, feeling of disconnect. It’s everywhere, and it takes even darker turns.

Instead of addressing the core problem, we double down on the profane mythos, and that will never work. It’s what has sickened us in the first place. It can’t fix us.

Hell, even for those who participate in sacred myth, when a majority of your interactions with people take place in profane myth, it sucks it from you too. And you can’t help but hope and believe the profane myth is right, and it will find an answer.

And so we continue the slow, spiraling descent.

That’s how it feels, right? I know, that as a backwoods Texas Sasquatch, sometimes I feel I can only sit in these woods and watch the world spiral. No one seems to care, and sometimes, even when a person sees the profane nature of the Myth, they still act within its confines to combat it. That gets frustrating.

Then? Then by some twist of fate you come across others who are also kindling the spark of the Sacred outside of the paradigm of the Myth of Progress. Then hope settles in and pushes back the bleakness of the Myth of Progress.

Let’s do it y’all.

Live Sacred.

Live Mythic.

Inspire the same in others.