Smile on the Void: the Mythhistory of Ralph M’Botu Kitaj (1)

…many of us have been educated to deny myth-thinking as part of the baggage of a nightmare past from which we are now struggling to awake. To pay heed to myth (as the Nazis did) can seem to mean a terrifying regression back to a superstitious sleep from which science and reason have but lately rescued us. However, the creative use of myth can guide us in self-discovery and lure us to wider understandings. It need not mean abandonment of reason and common sense; rather, it can lead to expansion and reorientation of the faculties. It is an obvious illusion to conisder this horrific era an Age of Reason: if we deny our mythic and intuitive faculties we will only plunge ourselves into worse confusion and disorder.