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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 5243991" data-attributes="member: 177">I have to admit I haven't read your sources, so I can only speak so much to them.I've heard of Hamlet's Mill, though.  As I understand the basic idea, mythology exists to perpetuate certain astrological concepts - that myths are about astrology, and not about human life (sex, love, how you get on with your father once you're grown up, and so on).Campbellian Monomyth and Hamlet's Mill agree there's commonality among mythologies, but they disagree on the source of that commonality.  Campbell attributes that to a commonality of human experience (or, on his wilder days, a literal communal human unconscious mind), while Hamlet's Mill suggests they are common because they are all trying to relate the same astrological data.I gotta tell you... the Hamlet's Mill version sounds pretty bogus.  While I don't doubt many early cultures had advanced astronomical knowledge, I don't buy the idea that they created and perpetuated myths to encode that knowledge.  Non-astronomers tell stories because the stories speak to their personal experiences, not because they tell you where the stars'll be in 5000 years.I mentioned the Golden Dawn largely due to the "initiation" and "ritual hidden in plain sight" sort of feel to what you were saying.</blockquote>