Grown Out of Myth

All
 Of the high cultures
 And low cultures
 And primitive cultures
 And charming simple cultures
 And great big enormous ones
 Have grown out of myths
 They are founded on myths
 And what these myths have given
 Has been inspiration
 For aspiration
 Now where do these aspirations come from?
 They come from
 A very wonderful
 Childlike thing
 Fascination
 You know if you wanted to make money
 Today
 I'm no economists
 But I'll bet
 The thing to do
 Would be to invest your money in something like cameras
 Things that people play with
 Things that they are fascinated by
 These
 Fascinations
 Are the creations of new
 Activities
 And when we look at the old cultures
 We can see
 All
 Cultures
 Have grown out of myths
 I said all
 Cultures
 They are founded on myth
 And what these myths have given
 Has been inspiration
 For aspiration
 And some of it is very strange
 To see
 Indeed
 What is most fascinating to begin with
 Is one's neighbor
 Particularly
 If the neighbor is a very strange looking creature
 Now think of man
 In the old days
 He was a minority
 On - on - on the planet
 And when he looked at his neighbors
 They had four feet
 They had horns
 They had great woolly bodies
 They were very strange playmates
 Furthermore
 He was eating
 Certain of them
 And
 They were
 Rather dangerous
 He had to
 Arrange
 Some kind of arrangement
 With his neighbors
 And we know
 That the first religious rites
 And the first religious address
 So to say
 Was to animals
 Their neighbors
 These
 Were the images of God
 All
 Cultures
 Have grown out of myths
 I said all
 Cultures
 They are founded on myth
 And what these myths have given
 Has been inspiration
 For aspiration
 Aspiration
 The animal world
 Was the first inspiration
 And the divinities
 Were animal divinities
 And not only that
 But just as kids
 When they identify with something
 When they are fascinated by something
 They
 Act like it
 They play it
 So
 The original rituals
 The
 Hunting people
 Danced buffalo dances
 They were in covenant
 With the animal world
 That through this covenant
 The animals gave their bodies
 Willingly
 To be eaten
 Because
 Only the body dies
 The being
 Comes back
 If you return the blood
 Of the animal to the earth
 The life is in the blood
 The earth
 Is the mother of life
 And the animal
 Will be back next year
 All
 Cultures
 Have grown out of myths
 I said all
 Cultures
 They are founded on myth
 And what these myths have given
 Has been inspiration
 For aspiration
 Aspiration
 People who lived
 Then
 In the plant
 World
 The world of the tropics
 Where nature was a plant world
 They saw something else
 They saw
 That out of rot
 Out of decay
 There comes life
 There comes life
 And this notion
 That out of death
 Comes life
 Becomes a very important thing
 In the tropical cultures
 And it led to what to us
 Is
 A very
 Horrible
 Pattern of rituals
 Rituals of human sacrifice
 Killing people
 Letting them rot
 Burying them
 With the
 Notion that out of this death
 There would come life
 All
 Cultures
 Have grown out of myths
 I said all
 Cultures
 They are founded on myth
 And what these myths have given
 Has been inspiration
 For aspiration
 Aspiration
 All
 Cultures
 Have grown out of myths
 I said all
 Cultures
 They are founded on myth
 And what these myths have given
 Has been inspiration
 For aspiration
 Aspiration