On pg. 174/5 in the Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Roberto Calasso tells a story of Athenian craftsmen. As Calasso puts it, the shaping of molds was the activity par excellence in ancient Athens. The Greeks knew that once made, their molds could be applied to an extremely wide range of materials for a very long time to come. The casts created using the mold will survive much longer than that which shaped them. Calasso goes on to say that "we live in a warehouse of casts that have lost their molds... In the beginning was the mold." This original mold is the foundation by which we live our lives day to day - myth.
As Calasso states earlier in the book, myth is the precedent behind every action. I did not put that in quotes so as to purposefully plagiarize it, as he did from another sentient being who had thought that same thing in the distant past. There is no such thing as originality in life, as every possible scenario we face on a day-to-day basis has already been enacted within mythology, one way or another. Our job is simply to realize the extent of displacement that our own stories hold. Myths can be used to decode parts of your life by the century, decade, year, month, or even hour - the reward for doing so is yours to discover.
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