Relational Readings of Myth as Ontology: Series Prelude

“Myth is not what early cultures believed; myth is how worlds became thinkable.”

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1. Orientation

This series, Relational Readings of Myth as Ontology, invites the reader to encounter the mythic traditions of the world not as flawed proto-science, nor as symbolic poetry requiring decoding, but as genuine ontological work: ways of worlding reality through imagistic construal. Rather than asking what myths represent, we ask what they actualise — how they enact intelligible worlds through relational potential.

This is not a comparative mythology series, nor a history-of-religions overview, nor a symbolic anthropology exercise. It is a re-reading of mythic thought through relational ontology and systemic functional linguistics (SFL), treating myth as a semiotic ontology in action.

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2. Purpose

The goal is neither reduction nor rehabilitation, but re-framing:

• Not What did they believe?

• But What ontological potentials were being actualised?

• Not Did they get the world right?

• But What semiotic cuts were they making possible?

• Not Where were they mistaken?

• But What could only be said in the imagistic mode they deployed?

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3. Theoretical Standpoint

This reading rests on three core commitments:

a. Relational Ontology

Reality is not composed of self-identical objects, but of systems of structured potential that become intelligible through perspectival actualisation (instantiation). Meaning is not discovered in things, but emerges between potentials and construal.

b. Semiotic Realism (Hallidayan)

Language, symbolism, and narrative do not describe the world from the outside; they are part of the world’s ongoing actualisation. Myths are not merely about ontology — they do ontology through meaning-making.

c. Myth as First-Order Construal

Myth is not primitive epistemology; it is lived construal of reality, a legitimate mode of ontological intelligibility equal to philosophical system, mathematical formalism, and scientific modelling.

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4. Method

To make each reading rigorous, we adopt the following principles:

1. No representationalism
   Myths are not treated as mistaken literal models of external reality.

2. No symbolism-hunting
   Myths are not decoded into hidden referents; their work is performed, not translated.

3. Instantiative interpretation
   Each mythic image is analysed as an actualisation of systemic potential, not an object of belief.

4. Context is not explanation
   Cultural, historical, and ecological backgrounds are relevant, but not reductive endpoints.

5. Comparisons are never adjudicative
   No tradition is primitive, superior, or modern; each is a unique relational cut.

6. Meaning is perspectival, not representational
   Myth worlds differ because their cuts differ, not because one lacks truth.

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Myth is not the memory of old worlds — it is the ongoing birth of possible ones.