Programme for the 40th Anniversary Conference Released

The Society is proud to announce that the programme for the 40th Anniversary Conference is now available! Join us in Edinburgh on April 5th for four days of talks and cosmological exchanges. You can view and download the full programme below, and more details on the conference are available on the dedicated page here.

Registrations are now closed, but day passes will be available for visitors to purchase at the door at a third of the normal rate. We will accept payments in pound sterling preferably, or alternatively in euros and dollars with an additional 6% transaction charge. TCS volunteers will be at hand to welcome you, and a special selection of rare mythology publications will be on sale at a special conference price.

We look forward to welcoming you to Edinburgh!

final-cosmos-conference-program-abstracts-sm-31.03.24-copyDownload

TCS and Temporality Research Cluster to host mythology and children event in Edinburgh

E 22, 74 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh |  12:30-13:30 (roughly)
Thursday 15th February 2024

On Thursday February 15th the Society will join the Temporality Research Cluster at the University of Edinburgh to host a scholarly talk on the subject of mythical ways of thinking in pre-school age children. Bára Nováková from Charles University in Prague, currently a visiting scholar at the College of Arts, will address the members of the Society and the public.

Here is a blurb from Dr Nováková:

Common human experience indicates that children think in a different way than adults. But how do children think differently? What can their responses to myth tell us about this distinction? How can we observe and describe this?

The discussion will be introduced TCS President Prof. Louise Milne.

If you’d like to join us in room E 22 of the Edinburgh College of Art Main Building (West Court), head over to Eventbrite and reserve yourself a ticket. The event is free, but donations to the Society are always welcome! Note: unfortunately this is a live event only, it is not streamed.

TCS teams up with Temporality Research Cluster to host mythology event in Edinburgh

C 13, 74 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh |  17:30-19:30 (roughly)
Friday 10th November

Exciting news! On Friday November 10th the Society will join the Temporality Research Cluster at the University of Edinburgh to host a scholarly symposium. Two leading scholars in contemporary mythologies will present their work and debate the situation of key myths in current culture with three School of Art PhD candidates: Sandy Sigala, Michael Trainor and Haiyu Yuan.

The discussion, chaired by TCS President Dr. Louise Milne, will see long-time TCS friend Jan Kozak (Charles University, Prague) exchange views from Will Linn (Hussian College, Los Angeles, USA).

To wet your palate, here is a wee blurb from Jan:

We usually think about mythology as neatly belonging to other eras or other cultures. It is always “they” who have or had mythology, never us. If we call something “myths” in our own society, it is typically just a synonym for “popular error” or some kind of folklore narrative. We have always safe distance from myth. In this paper I claim that mythology that works is always hard to spot, only mythologies that went out of fashion, or are culturally foreign, are easily discernible as myths. However, our society is not a historical exception, we have myths too and they are core players in the cultural war of our contemporary “post-factual” society.

I will sketch the landscape of contemporary secular mythology – from fictional myths of pop culture, through political myths, national myths, environmental myths to conspiracy theories. I will show that the border between religious myths (either connected to established religions, or to alternative spirituality) and secular myths is for the most part artificial and that the landscape is one continuum. My main thesis is very practical: without recognising social myths as true myths we cannot deal with them properly – the mainstream approach of e.g. “debunking” conspiracy theories misses the point completely and is demonstrably ineffective.

If you’d like to join us in room C 13 of the Edinburgh College of Art Main Building (West Court), head over to Eventbrite and reserve yourself a ticket. The event is free, but donations to the Society are always welcome! Note: unfortunately this is a live event only, it is not streamed. An audio recording will be made available for members on the TCS website.

TCS Member gave talk on the Mathematics of the Neolithic

In 2021, TCS member Dr Howie Firth gave a talk on The Mathematics of the Neolithic that was subsequently published by the 2021 on  which was subsequently published by the Orkney Archaeology Review. With hopes of bringing the talk to the attention of our members and friends, we repost it here!

Here is the original abstract:

Meticulous studies of stone circles by Alexander Thom and Euan MacKie have shown they were laid out in geometrical patterns, often aligned to movements of the sun and moon – but why? Dr Howie Firth approaches the question from a background in mathematics and physics to put it the other way round. Starting from the picture of the Neolithic put together by archaeology and social anthropology, what branch of mathematics would most appropriately express such a worldview?

It turns out that a question related to this was asked more than 150 years ago by the Irish mathematician Sir William Hamilton – and his answer leads the way to a mathematics of time as fundamental, from which a mathematics of space emerges. This opens the way to look afresh at the possible reasons for the construction of the circles and shed light on the development of science over five millennia.

Please find the recording below!

TCS Talk | Mythic Discourse Analysis: A Semiotic Approach | February 24th 2023

G.01, 50 George Square, Edinburgh |  18:00-19:30 (roughly)
Friday 24th February

King Gylfi gets himself beguiled. From the 18th century Icelandic manuscript SÁM 66 in the care of the Árni Magnússon Institute in Iceland.
image: Wikimedia Commons

For our first event of 2023, we have decided to go back to our roots: hailing from the University of Helsinki, Mr Frog will address the members and friends of the Society with a talk that engages directly with the structural foundations of myth as a discourse.

Here is the abstract Mr Frog circulated in preparation for the talk, which the Society will host in association with the University of Edinburgh Temporality Research Cluster: “Mythology and narrative traditions are found around the world. Our ability to recognize and categorize these even when translated across languages reflects their structuring and operation according to basic sets of features. This is comparable to all languages having lexemes of different classifications that combine according to rules of a grammar, and all languages operating in societies, leading their varieties to be linked to social identities, relative evaluations, other sign systems or media, and so forth. In this talk, I will introduce a semiotic approach to mythology that is also applicable to narrative discourse generally.

The framework has been developed to analyse ‘mythic discourse’, i.e. mythology as it is used, manipulated, and transmitted in society. It thus provides tools not only for approaching mythologies as ideal systems, but especially for approaching variation, hybridizations when different mythologies interact or encounter modernity, and also referential usage and reinvention. Many illustrations will come from Scandinavian mythology and medieval literature, others will be drawn from Finnic traditions, and some will also be taken from current Western popular entertainment and conspiracy discourse.”

As always, attendance is free but donations will be accepted at the door. If you wish to attend, please register yourself through the Eventbrite page of the event.